A wireless local area network (wireless local area network, WLAN) is a network system established in a wireless manner. By searching for and connecting to an access point (AP) on a WLAN, a user equipment (UE) that supports access to the WLAN may enjoy a broadband Internet service conveniently. Currently, in areas with a large population, such as an office building, a business center, and a school, a relatively large number of WLAN APs have been deployed for user access in some enterprises or schools.
In recent years, as mobile data traffic increases sharply, both a bandwidth and a speed of a mobile communications network face increasing challenges. To ease data traffic load of an existing mobile communications network, a telecommunications operator also starts to deploy a large number of WLAN APs progressively. How to optimize coverage of a wireless local area network and a mobile communications network and how to implement convergence and interworking between the wireless local area network and the mobile communications network are becoming a hot topic of technical researches and have great commercial potential. Convenient and quick collection of information about a deployed WLAN AP has important meaning for the optimization of WLAN coverage.
In the prior art, an application developer has already developed an application for collecting WLAN AP information. When a smart phone runs the application, information about a nearby WLAN AP is collected, and the collected WLAN AP information is uploaded to a server of the application developer for other users to share and use. However, this method requires that a user should install the specific application in the user's phone, and the collected WLAN AP information is transparent and invisible to a network provided by a telecommunications operator and cannot be used by the telecommunications operator. Currently, a technical solution for collecting WLAN AP information based on architecture of a mobile communications network has not been found yet.